“What I liked about Ichabod is that
he was written very much as somebody who’s just living too much up here –

inside of his own head.Andthat,juxtaposed againsta
characterwith no head, was a really
good dynamic.”

~Tim
Burton

Yes, Tim Burton always says the most
important things as if he just wants to make a witty remark. But when I was reading the one up here it
suddenly hit me: what a delightful psychological script we have here!! I took
the challenge and started to
organize everything on the impulse I had: characters, themes, conflicts
bursting and releasing.
Although the game of understanding them gave me some wonderful hours, I’ll
present here only two ways of
reading the story: the first one is a new chronology of Ichabod’s story,
counting the facts and the conflicts
as they evolved in his real life; the second one (characters and symbols)
focuses on concepts which represent
the characters and the main objects in the movie. Well – the rest of the game
is yours!

ICHABOD’S STORY

STAGE

DESCRIPTION

MOVIE SCENE

Ichabod
as a young child

Ichabod
was a happy child when his mother was alive. There was a time full of warmth,
love and magic. Those memories are forgotten and revealed only by the dreams.

Ichabod’s
dreams with his mother alone.

Ichabod
as a traumatised child

When the
maternal presence was gone (the details of her absence are little relevant –
death, abandon, etc), the enbittered father took the chance to mutate the
image of the mother in his child. We assume here that the father himself has
a lot of personal feelings to reprimand regarding his wife and that’s why he
uses his son for putting down her memory. The wounds on Ichabod’s palm mean
the love for his mother turned in prosecutional images by the authority of
his father.

All the
dreams about Ichabod’s mother being tortured and killed by the father and the
men around him.

Ichabod
as a cop (in New York)

Ichabod’s
mentality is similar to his father’s: even if the father was a religious man
and the son believes in science and reasoning, they both despise and accuse
the misterious forces of the psyche, represented by women (mother and
Katrina, with their blind dance). With this mentality, Ichabod cannot make a
free choice in love. He is isolated like the cardinal bird.

Ichabod’s
demos as a brain man in NY court;

Ichabod’s
dialogs with Katrina about his believes;

The demo
with the bird and the cage which is “optics”;

Ichabod
sent in the mission

The
danger of Ichabod’s state is relevant for some men around him, like the
Burgomaster. His reasoning starts to fail and to be useless.

The
sending in the mission;

Ichabod
accusing Katrina’s father;

The
number of the bodies growing in Sleepy Hollow

Ichabod’s
Shadow

The
trauma in Ichabod’s childhood burried under his rational mask generated a
complex negative side portrayed by a ferocious murder. The choice of a
Headless Horseman is not aleatory: the headless quality is the opposite of
the over-rational Ichabod. The shadow is the rest of his herritage, of his
feelings and intuitions, but also the deposit of his vindicative impulses.

When the
Horseman appears, a murder takes place: Ichabod must attend the scene,
confront the characters, solve the situation. All
the victims the Horseman chooses are essential for Ichabod’s story.

Ichabod
and Katrina

As a
grown up man, Ichabod falls in love with Katrina, the perfect girl to be his
wife. This event puts in conflict his need for fulfilment and his old fears
of women and irational. A lot of opposite forces enter the stage: Lady Van
Tassel is related to Katrina, she is her “mother”, she is the negative image
of the woman (the dark Anima); the Horseman, originated and directed by her,
begins his revenge with specific victims: imoral women (the pregnant widow,
the adulterine maid), then apparently happy families (mother-father-child),
the reverend (a corrupt church man reminding of his father), some fathers in
the village (Baltus and Masbeth).

The witch
dance scene, when Katrina “sees” him blindfolded better than he understands
her, even if he has a strong reaction toward her;

The
murder scenes.

Ichabod’s
victims

Meeting
Katrina, Ichabod tends to burry again the awakening original image of his
mother. That’s why the Horseman kills those women with kind of imoral
behaviour (father-like acts) or the three persons
family (another resemblance with his childhood). But there is another
tendency, oposed to the first one, revealing hard feelings toward the father
and his unforgetable action: this is a superior level of Ichabod’s awakening,
when he tries to express the disaproval for his father’s acts ( the Horseman killing the fathers).

The
different stages of Ichabod’s evolution

There are
some new characters, after Katrina, who suggest and encourage his evolution:
the young Masbeth incarnates his purpose of understanding his childhood
(Masbeth will never leave Ichabod from now on); the visit at the crone
suggests that Ichabod tends to rely not only on his rationality, but also on
magic and intuition. Suddenly, his problem (“the murders”) becomes very
clear; he discoveres his unconscious (the dead tree and the Horseman’s
grave). By finding the body without a head, Ichabod understands that the
problem is hidden somewhere inside him, where the mind is helpless.

The
battle

Even
revealed, the dark forces are not easy to defeat. They start to react
violently against those who jeopardize their long lasting domination:
Katrina, young Masbeth and the crone. The two elements desintegrated from
Anima (the two witch-sisters) will disappear in the process as their effects
are consumed. Katrina is the target for the last attempted murder; she is
mistaken with the negative witchcraft, abandoned by Ichabod (even if he
realises he is loosing his last chance to be free) and chased by the Horseman
(the dark conservative force).

The issue

Ichabod
putting the head on the Horseman means that he is now fully conscious of both
parts of his psyche: the burried, forgotten one, and the helpless, rigid one
he created. He manages to reconcile them and the shadow is exposed, harmless
and set free. All the intermediate characters are resorbed and the tree
closes after them.

CHARACTERS & SYMBOLS

CHARACTER

CORRESPONDENT

COMMENTS

Ichabod
Crane

Ego

Ichabod
is the consciousness, expressed by a very rational, logical way of judging
the world. As a “rational” man, he is the “head” by excelence, who, as the
script follows, is missing the rest of his being (“the body”).

Headless
Horseman

Shadow

H.H. is
the product of the unconsciousness: Ichabod’s own shadow. He incarnates the
refulations of the traumatised child Ichabod. Hence, he throws the dilemma to
the “Ego”, he puts in danger the integrity of our hero and he acts as the
vicious character, unrecognizable by Ichabod himself.

Ichabod’s
mother

The
original image of Ichabod’s mother, as he perceived her in his early
childhood.

She is
benigne, femminile, loving and cherished by the child, surrounded by light,
fancies and positive magic. She determines the image of “Anima” – another
unconscient product, later to be projected to someone similar – like Katrina.

Ichabod’s
father

The image
of the father perceived as an authority.

He is
apparently tough, rational and just, but he’s also cruel, limited and scared
by women, and consequently by his wife’s nature and gifts. He chooses to
punish what he does not understand, putting in his son a similar reaction
toward women.

Lady Van
Tassel

The image
of the mother as seen from his father’s perspective

As a
consequence of demonising his wife, Ichabod’s father describes the mother as
evil, so Ichabod develops this malefic image of his mother, forgetting the
real loved one. This evil character becomes the main accomplice of the Shadow
(the Horseman), practically originating him and his course.

The crone

The
forgotten memory of the mother

Unlike
the original image of the mother, the crone is not a pleasant one. She holds
the truth, she gives Ichabod the idea of researching the proper place / the
right problem, but she is covered by veils, meaning past times, forgotten
memories, dificulty of revealing the refulated feelings of the childhood.

Katrina

The Anima

Katrina
is the girl who matches Ichabod’s inner image of love interest. By no
coincidence, Katrina has strong resemblence with his mother as he originally
knew her. Meeting Katrina is the plot of his awakening process. In order to
be with Katrina, he has to solve his old problem regarding mother-women.

Baltus
Van Tassel, Masbeth’s father

Guilty
father’s images

All those
father images revitalise Ichabod’s doubts about his father judging and
punishing his mother – actions logically understood by the child Ichabod, but
deeply questioned by his feelings. He has to punish the father in his turn
both in a rational way (see Ichabod’s hypothesis that Mr. Baltus is the
murderer in the village) and on an uncounscious level (Horseman killing the
fathers).

Young
Masbeth

The child
Ichabod

Masbeth
is always aside Ichabod in the key points. He has no mother, his father is
also punished by the Horseman, he acompanies Ichabod in the wood, to the crone’s
cave. Young Masbeth is Ichabod himself digging the childhood, the truth, the memories. Ichabod needs to recuperate the child within
(Masbeth) in order to go back in New York as a new, healed person.

Brom

Persona

Brom
looks like the desirable young man – he is the fiance of the beautiful
Katrina. Ichabod might substitute this kind of boy in his way of getting a
wife. Brom is also helpful when it comes to fight the shadow.

The
Burgomaster

The
adviser

He is the
man who puts in front of Ichabod the two alternatives: going to solve his
problem or remainig forever a prisoner of his own complexes (a cardinal in a
cage).

The
villagers from Sleepy Hollow

The
witnesses and victims of Ichabod’s mental state

The Tree
of the Dead

The gate
to the unconsciousness

This
strange tree opens the way to the refulated feelings and images, and it is
also the location for all the characters produced by them.

The
Windmill

The
confrontation place

It is the
scene for the final battle between the evil splitted parts in Ichabod and the
fulfilled man he has to become.

The
Cardinal and the cage

The
conscious and the uncounscious

It is a
general metaphor of the emprisoned soul; it is also a new connection between
Katrina and Ichabod’s mother. The release of the cardinal from his
appartment, as connected to the Sleepy Hollow mission, is symbolic of Ichabod
beginnig his liberatory journey.

The signs
on Ichabod’s hand

The
trauma in Ichabod’s childhood

Ichabod
bares the signs on his palm, although he does not immediately remember where
he got them from. Only the dream reveals their meaning – the traumatised
memory of the killing of his mother. The murder acts metaphorically – father
might not be the physical killer of the mother, but he definitely destroyes a
dear image in his child – from which the scarces in Ichabod’s palm reminding
the needles in his mother’s body.

The
location of the story

The
valley of the unconscious

Ichabod,
the city man, has to travel far away, in a strange land, with no logical
rules, lost in woods, fog, with complicated paths, in order to fight his
shadow and move further in his life. He enters a territory where his rational
methods fail – the territory of unconscious.

Ichabod’s
instruments

Rational
weapons

Ichabod
invented all those bizarre instruments in order to locate the guilt in the
logical aspects of reality. The more he works on his inventory, the more his
reasoning fails.